


Crow's Feet

by Feynite



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 18:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6531562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feynite/pseuds/Feynite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zevran’s not really as handsome as he seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crow's Feet

Zevran’s not really as handsome as he seems.

On paper, he _sounds_ handsome. The long blond hair, the lithe elven build, the tan skin and honey-gold eyes and cocksure smile - all attractive features. But when she stares at him, really _looks_ at Zevran and not all of the pieces, he isn’t that handsome. The sun has etched premature lines into the skin around his eyes and mouth, making him look older than his thirty-something years ought to. His teeth are off-color and a little crooked, the long blond hair is dry and splits at the ends, and he’s a little on the short side, even by elf standards - though this last is largely irrelevant to her. He’s far from ugly, to be certain, but he’s not particularly gorgeous, either.

But then, Zevran isn’t really much of _anything_ that he seems to be. 

He talks like an arrogant man, words flowing through him in endless streams of innuendo, insult, and misdirection. But he doesn’t act like one. He never lets his pride blind his decisions, and he is well aware of his own limitations and mortality. He doesn’t over-estimate himself or under-estimate everyone else. 

He moves like a careless man, but everything he does in a fight is carefully chosen, each step made to conserve his energy while delivering the most dire impact possible. To misdirect, to deter, to get his opponent to underestimate or overlook him.

In point of fact, Zevran’s an observer, and a manipulator, a master of his craft - his true calling is more conman, she suspects, than assassin. But then, a skill’s a skill, and one craft’s virtues can usually be turned to more things than the guilds would ever care to admit.

She’d seen both types long before she ever became a Warden, either way. There are all kinds running around Dust Town. Thugs and whores, beggars and thieves, assassins and swindlers and cold-blooded killers. Zevran’s seen them all too, she thinks, even if he saw them from above the surface instead of below it. Zev’s like her that way. No matter how hard the world has tried it hasn’t been able to kill his conscience. Just quiet it down a little, enough to get by with when survival means doing terrible, terrible things.

It’s not a pleasant view of the world, all lit up so that the shadows that are a mystery to everyone else are bright and wide open to them, shoving all that ugliness where it’s impossible not to see. That kind of awareness puts the dark places inside of a person on display, too, until it’s all too easy to look into a mirror and see only another monster. All too easy to fall into the trap of assuming that the ones who don’t feel the same way have some kind of advantage. In the carta, a conscience was a liability. She’s sure it’s the same with the Crows. Buying up scrawny orphans and the unwanted urchins off the street and putting them through hell, seeing what comes walking out the other side? Yeah. That sounds familiar.

Zevran’s not really as handsome as he seems. Handsome is for noblemen who’ve never been spit on. It’s for unmarked souls, who stand with their backs straight, who’d never cringe or cower or bend to save their lives. Handsome’s a word for large piles of coins, and Deshyrs who walk through the streets without seeing them, and folk with square jaws and clean shirts and no blood on their knuckles.

Zev can seem handsome. But the truth is, he’s beautiful.

The first time she sees him, after that whole mess in Amaranthine, and then Kirkwall, she’s just crawled through more miles of darkspawn-infested Deep Roads than she’d ever care to measure. Her gloves are clean, but they still feel slick with blackened blood, and her wounds are scarred over, but she can still feel dagger-like claws ripping at her leathers. She wants a drink and a bed and she wants her damn assassin, and when she finally sees him, it’s like the sun coming up. He’s got braids in his hair. When he turns to her the crow’s feet at his eyes crinkle up, and he smiles big and wide. His voice is like music.

Sometimes she imagines talking to her sister in her head. More easily than with the clumsy letters she tries to write, going slow because she never had so much need for writing before she came up topside. _Rica,_  she imagines saying. _There’s folk on the surface, and sometimes they talk, and it sounds like music. Not like nugshit music you bash out on a drum somewhere. Like the real stuff we used to hear floating down from the Diamond Quarter when we got brave enough to go climb the rooftops, and squish through the gaps in the stone. And there are folk up here, and they’re tall and pretty as you please, but that don’t matter nearly as much as the rest of it. I found one with a heart more gold than his hair. I found him under a hungry sky, in a pool of mud and blood, and the world tried to throw him away, but Rica. Rica, he’s better than any gem any craftsman ever cut to gleaming shine._

“And here I was beginning to worry I would have to write a sternly-worded letter to the darkspawn, asking them to stop detaining you,” Zevran says, still smiling too big.

She marches over to where he’s sitting at the tavern bar, and nearly pulls him out of his seat in her haste to get her arms around him. She buries her face against him and just breathes him in. Leather and spices and sweat. 

She’s half expecting to get another quip out of him.

But he just puts his arms back around, getting his balance again, and clutches her back once he’s recovered from the surprise.

“Mi amor,” he sighs.

“I missed you,” she admits, too worn down to bother with pretences for now. He chuckles, at that, but it’s a soft sound. A little wry; like he’s just been thinking the same thing, and he knows it’s an understatement. She pulls back a bit after a moment, and looks him over critically. He’s got a big new scar on his hand, and a scrape on his jaw. His hair’s mostly covering it. She presses knowingly at his ribs, but he doesn’t wince any. Still. She’d bet there’s plenty of bruises on him.

There’s plenty on her, too.

“I rented us a room. If you are set upon fondling me - not that I blame you for the impulse - I might recommend we retreat there.”

She inclines her head, but keeps hold of his hand as he leads her up the steps to the ramshackle little inn they’d agreed to meet in. The village is quiet, just off the coast. The air smells like salt, and the distant raging of the sea; which always makes her feel off-kilter, come to it. She’s stood at the edge of the ocean and seen where the vast spread of water meets the wide-open sky, and it was like getting sucked back into the Fade. Except with less demons around. The sea sounds hungry, to her, and the sky still feels like it’s going to sweep her up on a stray wind sometimes, no matter how sturdy she stands.

But that’s easier to ignore with a roof overhead and wooden walls around them, even if they’re thin. Zev takes her to their room with a lot of eyebrow-waggling and suave talk, smooth and wry by turns.

“It is the nicest room in the establishment. The honeymoon suite, if you will. Big enough to fit an actual bed, and secure the services of the town whore. I took the liberty of declining that prospect, however.”

“Bet you paid for it anyway,” she guesses, knowing.

He shrugs.

“Everyone deserves a night off now and then. If you had taken any longer, at least I would have had prospective company for the evening.”

 _Liar,_ she thinks, fondly.

“Maybe I should take off and come back in the morning?” she offers.

The playful tone drops a bit.

Zevran looks at her, and after a moment, lifts a hand to her cheek.

“If I have to go even another minute without you, I will go mad from longing,” he tells her. His throat bobs as he swallows, and his gaze is steady and intent. She knows that look. It’s not one that most people think of when they think of a person letting down their walls. But behind all the charm and the flippancy and the misdirection, there is this sharp, steady man. He bends and he sways and he twists himself to survive, to get things done. But he’s as solid as any stone, too.

His hand’s warm on her cheek.

She slips her fingers into the pocket at her side, and closes them around the treasure she’d found in the Deep Roads. In an old thaig, overrun with darkspawn and spiders and deepstalkers, and things she doesn’t think have a right name, and might have been tainted, but were definitely trying to eat her anyway. In a dusty box, in a chamber full of weeping ghosts.

Pure gold. A solid band, with just the tiniest square diamond set into the top.

On the surface, she knows, they give rings.

Well. Humans do. She’s not so sure about elves, but she hadn’t asked before she left, and she thinks Zev will understand, even if it’s not quite right. She closes a fist around the ring, and draws it up. She’ll do him one better than throwing it at him and pretending like it doesn’t mean anything. They’ve come that far, at least.

“Got you this,” she says, and pulls his palm gently from her face, and tucks the ring into it. Her hands are solid and square. Not clumsy, though. Back when her mother was still sober sometimes, she used to say that their family came from Jeweller’s stock. Keen eyes. Steady hands. A knack for details.

That’s how she’d found the ring.

That’s how she’d found her man, too, hiding behind all his layers.

Zevran raises an eyebrow.

“You got me a ring?” he asks, just carefully. Not sure if he’s misreading.

“That’s what you do when you want to ask someone to marry you up here, right?” she checks. “And if they put it on it’s a ‘yes’, and if they fence it then it’s a ‘no’.” Her face feels hot, and her fingers want to stray towards the earring she’s wearing. She’d wondered, the first time she’d heard that, if it counted when the ring was an earring.

She’s still not sure on that front.

Probably better just to have mismatched set of sorts all the same.

Zev’s quiet just for long enough that she starts to worry, until he closes his hand around the ring. Tight. Then she worries again, because that’s maybe not putting it on; but he opens his hand after a minute, and plucks up the ring. Gives it a long look. It’s clean. She wiped it down… must’ve been about a thousand times, making sure there was no taint on it, nothing caught between the stone and the setting, no marks or scratches or anything stuck to the band.

“I pulled it out of an old thaig,” she admits. She’s not so good at telling stories as he is, but she supposes if he’s going to give her jewellery off of dead assassination targets, she can give him some out of rubble-strewn darkspawn nests.

He slides it onto his finger, quietly.

For a moment, both of them just look at the ring, and neither of them says anything.

“It fits,” Zevran finally declares.

“That’s gotta be a good sign, ri-”

He cuts her off with a kiss. Sweeping in low, wrapping his arms tight around her, nearly tilting her off those sturdy feet of hers. There’s just the slightest tremble to the muscles in his arms. His lips are hungry where they catch hers, and she feels greedy enough for him to return it tenfold. She clutches at his back and pulls him closer still.

When they finally part again, his eyes are shining.

“So that’s a yes, right?” she checks.

He laughs.


End file.
